STOCKTON - For Rachel McGehee, a house is a home. And a home is all about relationships, memory making, feeling safe and secure.

For her husband, Justin, doing the wrong thing was the only way they could do the right thing.

Their Stockton foreclosure story is driven by a desire to stay in town after graduating from University of the Pacific, and it is driven by family considerations and bad timing.

It also has a happy ending.

"I definitely see having a home as a tool to love people and also as a vehicle for personal character growth," said Justin. Added Rachel, "A home is place that is warm and welcoming, a haven from the harshness of the world."

The McGehees, both 31, met in 1999 while students at Pacific. Justin got his first job as a freshman English teacher with Chavez High School. He was there when the Chavez doors first opened, and he still is.

They bought their first home, a small starter near the intersection of Mission Road and Country Club Boulevard, in 2004 for $265,000. They loved it, painted it, landscaped it and gave it TLC.

In 2006, their first son, Geist (German for "spirit"), was born. Two years later, the small home became smaller still with the birth of Zac, a second son.

By then, the nation's housing market had tanked and Stockton was ground zero. The McGehee home dropped in value to $70,000.

The couple originally had a five-year plan to relocate to the Chicago area where Justin would attend seminary. That had to be abandoned. And their adjustable-rate mortgage, never intended to go beyond five years, was about to adjust. Monthly mortgage payments of $1,700 were going to rise on a home that had lost three-fourths of its value.

They needed to move.

Conspiring against them: their 99.92 percent credit rating and their diligence in making payments. "We had flawless credit, and it worked against us," Justin said.

The couple didn't qualify for any of the emerging government programs designed to help those upside down on their mortgage.

"We met with HUD (Housing and Urban Development) folks," Rachel said. "We wanted it to work. We did paperwork and more paperwork, and nothing came of it."

But as the sons grew, the pressure on the young family to find a new home intensified.

"Fortunately, we had been conservative in our first home," Justin said, "so we qualified for an FHA (Federal Housing Administration) loan for a new home."

So while still owning one tiny depressed property, they moved forward on buying a more spacious place to live.

Today, the four McGehees live in the Venetian Bridges neighborhood of north Stockton. Their new mortgage is $1,000 a month for a 1,700-square-foot home. They purchased it for $150,000 during the spring of 2010.

The first home?

After unsuccessfully trying for a short sale (they actually had a buyer lined up), the couple did what Bank of America officials told them. They stopped making payments, stopped mowing the grass and stopped taking care of things. BofA's $75,000 foreclosure was finalized in February 2011. "It was irrational and idiotic," said Justin, who was raised in Manteca. "Banks are officially bad guys."

A few months later, Rachel had to drop by the first home to pick up a package that had been delivered. "I met the owner, a retired single woman. She said, 'God has a purpose. This is all I could afford.' "

The overall experience has a bittersweet quality.

The first home will always have special memories. "I still feel sad. We prayed over every room," Rachel said. And both had put their share of sweat into improvements that someone else is now enjoying.

Justin said the new home more than meets their needs and the young family (Geist is now 6 and Zac is 41/2) could easily stay where they are for the rest of their lives.

"Home is where you are at the beginning and end of your life's quest," Rachel said. "It's a safe place for the beginning and end."